Book description
Max Roper is one of the new-fangled breed who includes murder in his
arsenal of security activities. In The Pushbutton Butterfly, he
has to track a missing girl through a myriad of fascinating, violent,
and potentially evil people, including an idealistic student rebel at
Berkeley; the most fashionable of gurus; young coeds who augment their
income by pushing heroin; a motorcycle gang leader who is flying high
all the time; and a staid, liberal pillar of the Establishment who
secretly collects pornographic pictures.
Roper is a compelling man who carries his own standards of behavior
into every society he encounters. He fits best with the local police
who are his friends, with an aspiring Mr. America, whom he can throw
with karate, indeed with all types of evildoers and guardians against
evildoers. He's an adaptable fellow, though, and manages to get on
well-when he has to-with millionaires and murderers of all classes.
The Pushbutton Butterfly begins when Max Roper's boss, head of
an organization called EPT, sends him out to investigate the report of
a missing girl, a security project. EPT, an offshoot of a wartime
operation, occasionally does top, top secret jobs for the CIA and
other legal espionage groups. In this case, the girl's father is
manufacturing some highly important electronic gadgets, and there's
some danger that pressure could be exerted o him through his daughter
to release secret formulas. The father, who is understandably inimical
to Roper's presence in the case, gives grudging cooperation. The girl
is a student at Berkeley, and there Max goes to learn what he can from
her friends. He finds one of them almost immediately, an attractive
girl whose charms are not improved the condition in which Max finds
her, which is very dead.
From this opening, there is no letdown to the pace and excitement of
The Pushbutton Butterfly, Max Roper's first case, a
provocative introduction.
